Rolling Stones play surprise club show in Paris

As secrets go, the Rolling Stones’ surprise gig on Thursday in Paris has to be considered among the worst-kept variety. Word quickly shot around the world on the Internet about the show well before the band took the stage at La Trabendo rock club, the group’s first public show in five years.

But 600 fans on hand, who paid 15 Euros apiece (a little over $19) to attend, may have gotten the classic-rock bargain of the year, given that tickets for the Stones’ upcoming concerts at the Prudential Center sports arena in New Jersey are going for $95 to $750 (and that’s just at face value).

The Stones’ only scheduled 2012 concerts include Nov. 25 and 29 appearances at London’s O2 Arena, and Dec. 13 and 15 shows at the Prudential Center. The band is widely expected to tour more extensively in 2013, as a belated 50th anniversary nod to the group’s birth in 1962.

The set began with the Bobby Troup classic “Route 66,” which drew a straight line back to the Stones’ days of banging out covers in London clubs, as did their take on Muddy Waters’ “Champagne and Reefer,” which fleshed out a batch of cornerstone numbers from their own catalog.

The performance also included “It’s Only Rock 'n' Roll,” “Shattered,” “When the Whip Comes Down,” “Miss You,” “Tumbling Dice,” “Start Me Up,” and “Midnight Rambler.” Returning in response for the crowd’s call for an encore, the band threw in “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “Brown Sugar.”

The Stones’ official Twitter feed, @RollingStones, provided a song-by-song rundown as the set unfolded, and also posted one of Jagger’s comments to the audience: "I can't believe we're all still standing up -- you'd think by now one or two of us would be sitting down, but we're not!”

Here’s an excerpt of their performance of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” in which Jagger, 69, appears to have lost little of the athletic energy that’s been his signature as the Stones’ frontman since the beginning.

Updated at 1:29 p.m.: An earlier version of this post misspelled Bobby Troup's surname as Troupe.